SEATTLE — Another week, another revelation of e-mails involving SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett that could slow or even perhaps stop the team’s move from Seattle to Oklahoma City, a move the NBA overwhelmingly approved last week.
A City of Seattle filing this week in federal court in New York includes e-mails to and from Bennett that show the NBA was concerned last summer that the Sonics’ ownership might be breaching its contractual promise of good-faith efforts to find a new arena in Seattle.
In court documents provided Thursday by lawyers representing the city, Bennett stated in an e-mail to Sonics co-owner Aubrey McClendon last Aug. 13 that the NBA was looking into issues “relative to certain documents that we signed at closing that may have been breached.”
Bennett wrote that Joel Litvin, president of league and basketball operations, was looking into the possible breach.
Earlier that day, Bennett had written an e-mail to McClendon referring to the fallout from McClendon’s comment to an Oklahoma business publication that “we didn’t buy the team to keep it in Seattle, we hoped to come here.”
“Yes sir, we get killed on this one,” Bennett wrote to McClendon. “I don’t mind the PR ugliness (pretty used to it), but I am concerned from a legal standpoint that your statement could perhaps undermine our basic premise of ‘good faith best efforts.”
NBA commissioner David Stern fined McClendon $250,000 for his comment. Seattle is citing it as evidence that Sonics’ owners lied to Seattle when asserting they weren’t trying to move the team.
The e-mails are part of the city’s recent filings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where Seattle is attempting to compel the NBA to provide financial records for the league and all of its teams. The city is also trying to force Stern to testify as part of Seattle’s dispute with the Professional Basketball Club, the Sonics’ ownership entity, over the KeyArena lease.
A week before NBA owners voted 28-2 to approve the team’s move to Oklahoma, Seattle released e-mails that appeared to show Bennett and his Sonics co-owners were eagerly anticipating moving the team from Seattle to Oklahoma City almost as soon as they bought the team in July 2006 for $300 million from a Seattle-area group led by Starbucks Corp. Chairman Howard Schultz.
In one e-mail from April 2007 Bennett stated, “I am a man possessed! Will do everything we can,” in response to co-owner Tom Ward asking if they were in for another “lame duck season” in Seattle.
Last week, immediately after the NBA approved the move, Bennett said he was referring to how possessed he was to find a home for the team in Seattle.
Earlier this week, Schultz filed suit in federal court in Seattle, seeking to undo the sale and alleging Bennett violated the good-faith agreement.
The Sonics provided the e-mails to comply with a ruling by federal Judge Marsha Pechman in Seattle. She ruled such messages among the co-owners were pertinent for the discovery phase of the June trial between the city and the Sonics over the KeyArena lease.
Bennett argues he is contractually allowed to write a check to buy out the lease and thus move his team to Oklahoma City for next season.
The city asserts the lease requires the team to play in KeyArena through the 2009-10 season. Seattle wants to keep the Sonics in town for those two years to buy time for a group led by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer or some other local buyer to find an arena solution and keep the team in the region for the long term.
The trial is scheduled to begin June 16 in federal court in Seattle.
In a motion Bennett filed last week in Seattle, the owner claimed the trial “has nothing to do with the last two years of the lease. Instead, the city is trying to exploit its landlord status to force the (Professional Basketball Club) to sell the team … to drive up costs for the PBC … to try to force PBC to sell.”
The city already has rejected Bennett’s offer of $26 million to settle. Last week, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels repeatedly refused to say whether there was a price at which the city would considering settling with Bennett. The mayor instead reiterated the city intends for the Sonics to remain in Seattle for the long term.
Other e-mails released Thursday appeared to show Bennett had his sights on the Sonics moving to Oklahoma City well before his deadline of Oct. 31, 2007, to find a new home in Seattle.
Just after the Washington state Legislature rejected Bennett’s proposal for a $500 million arena — using $278 million in public funds — in the Seattle suburbs last April, Bennett contrasted his hometown to Seattle in terms of suitability for the Sonics.
“While Oklahoma City is a much smaller media market, this ownership group provides a unique relationship with the corporate community, city and state government, the local media and proven fan base,” Bennett wrote to NBA executive Litvin on April 23, 2007.
“The notion of the NBA being ‘the only game in town’ and indeed the only professional franchise in the state is compelling.”
Bennett also told a meeting of the Seattle Convention and Visitors Board that Las Vegas was a possible relocation alternative. In an e-mail to Stern dated April 28, 2007, Bennett said he regretted “my clumsy volley” but wrote that the “threat of Las Vegas has moved the needle” on what he saw as Seattle’s indifference toward the Sonics’ situation.
“Leadership in the market has never valued the threat of moving to Oklahoma City,” Bennett wrote to Stern. “They don’t even know where it is.”
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